Over 24 persons, including Pius Awoke, a member of the legal team representing the leader of the Indigenous People of Biafra, Nnamdi Kanu, are still being held in a secret detention camp by Nigeria security forces according to their families
Speaking on behalf of the aggrieved families at a press conference in Abuja on Monday, Nnaemeka Ejiofor, a lawyer to the IPOB leader, Nnamdi Kanu, said the detainees are being held by the State Security Service (SSS) and the Nigerian Army.
According to him, the 24 persons were part of hundreds of people in different courts in Nigeria, most of whom have now become victims of enforced disappearance.
According to the lawyer, “Once a person is forced to disappear, such a person loses the protection of the law.“The persons under this unlawful detention are purely under the state of nature and in these days of trading in human parts, one cannot tell if they have been balkanized and sold in bits and pieces”
“We urge the Federal Government to do the right thing by producing these victims and releasing them to their families with apologies and compensation as it is not a crime to demand self-determination like the IPOB, under the leadership of Mazi Nnamdi Kanu, has been clamouring for over the years.” Said Ejiofor
The lawyer listed the detainees to include Pius Awoke, Ikechukwu Henry, Joy Godwin Udoh aka (Idara Gold), Emeka Ngonadi, Chinedu Nwoba, Igwe Johnson Dike, Ogbonna Joseph Ajah, Kingsley Onovu, Ogbonna David, Kenneth Ojima, Fortune Okezie, Joseph Okafor Eze, Emmanuel Onyibe Chinonso and Uket Godwin.
According to him, “These victims are just a fraction of the number of persons who were arrested and disappeared as so many very gory and scary reports of extra-judicial execution, murder in the cruelest manner such as by suffocation, starvation and or summary execution abound”
“None of these victims of enforced disappearance have received
anything like a trial since their arrests. None of them has ever been allowed to contact their lawyers or family and all judicial efforts made to see them or get them released has been illegally thwarted and frustrated,” Said Ejiofor
